The White House’s plan to shift some of NASA’s shuttle responsibilities to private space companies won a much-needed victory Friday with the successful launch of a federally sponsored rocket in Florida.

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POLITICO 44

It’s an early gauge of the viability of a commercial space program — and a coup for President Barack Obama, who visited SpaceX as he began to make a public case for an overhaul of NASA’s structure and funding earlier this year.

A less successful test launch could have further galvanized congressional opposition to the president’s 2011 NASA budget. That spending plan would shift some of the responsibility for ferrying astronauts into space to commercial space companies — including SpaceX, which completed Friday’s test with the help of a 2008 contract with NASA worth billions.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said that the successful test suggests that the vehicle will be in "full operation delivering cargo to the International Space Station a year from now."

Still, some of the key players in the NASA debate sought to downplay the importance of Friday’s launch, noting that the program itself is still two years behind schedule.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), the ranking member on the Senate Commerce Committee and one of the most vocal skeptics of the president’s NASA budget, called the launch a “belated sign” that commercial space flight is possible.

At the same time, she hammered away at Obama’s plant to nix Constellation — the program established by President George W. Bush to return astronauts to the moon and to Mars.

Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, whose state of Alabama is also a NASA stronghold, further decried the launch as a display merely replicating what “NASA accomplished in 1964.”

“Belated progress for one so-called commercial provider must not be confused with progress for our nation’s human space flight program,” Shelby said. “As a nation, we cannot place our future space flight on one fledgling company's definition of success.”

Overhauling NASA has proved to be a hard slog for the Obama administration and agency Administrator Charles Bolden. The White House has premised its NASA budget on an independent commission’s findings last year that the agency lacks the technology to reach Mars, as the Bush administration sought.

However, recent efforts to rewire the agency to meet its Mars objective have been met with staunch political opposition, especially amid fears that the changes could result in lost jobs ahead of a tough midterm election year. The result has been a series of congressional hearings at which lawmakers have laid into Bolden, even as he stresses the White House plans to devote funds to retraining employees affected by changes in funding levels.

Friday’s launch was not without its kinks: A first attempt to send the rocket to orbit was aborted earlier in the day because of a technical glitch. SpaceX plans to hold a second test later this year, also sponsored by NASA, culminating in a final test launch that would have the vehicle dock at the International Space Station.

she hammered away at Obama’s plant to nix Constellation – the program established by President George W. Bush to return astronauts to the Moon and to Mars.

"......the program ........to return astronauts to the moon and to Mars."

Sure, Senator Hutchison, let's spend 10's of Billion of dollars we don't have to send astronauts to the moon and Mars. While I support space exploration, we have much more pressing problems we need to solve here on Earth.

Sure, Senator Hutchison, let's spend 10's of Billion of dollars we don't have to send astronauts to the moon and Mars. While I support space exploration, we have much more pressing problems we need to solve here on Earth.

You'll be saying that when the Russians and Chinese are looking into your backyard from moon bases...and that is perhaps the weakest argument for space travel, that we HAVE to go back to the moon, and press on to mars, if we are to maintain our advantage in global affairs over other countries.

I'm not overly impressed by this. A "private" company put a rocket into space with government money using government facilities based, largely, off of government research from FOURTY YEARS AGO.

I am highly skeptical of private space exploration at the present time. Private companies operate for one reason: profit. And while there may be a small market in low-orbit space tourism, the profit potential for space is highly questionable. Asteroid mining is folly - you'd have to find the right asteroid, somehow know what is in it, build the right equipment, send it there (you get one shot), mine as much as you can, get it back to earth before the asteroid gets too far away, and land safely all before you make even one penny worth of profit. Things can, do, and will go wrong, and with private companies, one bad launch, or missed target, or failed return means bankruptcy.

Even assuming these companies could simultaneously make a profit from lifting astronauts and satellites into orbit, AND saving the government money over the shuttle or Constellation, that still leaves American access to space subject to private,rather than public, interest.

Constellation was by no means perfect...and I mean by no means at all. Yet Obama's plan to turn that over to private companies, while switching NASA to explore an asteroid, or even Mars (without telling us how, how much it would cost, how soon it could be done, etc) has potentially put us behind other nations in returning man to the moon.

Once again Shelby vividly demonstrates that he has absolutely no idea what the hell he's talking about. Falcon9 will have the capability to put up to 7 people in orbit on one vechicle. Even the mighty Apollo/Saturn5 combination wasn't designed with that capacity. What did we have in 1964 that even remotely resembled the capabilities of Dragon/Falcon9? It's clearly bigger and more powerful than anything we flew until later in that decade.

And he speaks of "belated progress" without even mentioning the severely belated, over-budget, far behind-schedue Ares1, which, by the way, was being developed to merely replicate what NASA had already "accomplished" in 1969.

The success of Falcon9 represents massive progress for our nation’s human space flight program. And this country's future in human space flight will also be determined by long-established firms such as Boeing, and Lockheed, and Orbital Sciences, as well as by fledglings such as SpaceX.

By any objective measure the maiden flight of Falcon9 was an outstanding success. As usual, Shelby's very own words reveal him as no true friend of human space flight and no true friend of this nation's future in space.

You couldn`t have said it better.Most of what NASA is, is an outrageously overpriced jobs program .

Except for keeping the US at an advantage militarily over the Soviets during the cold war, most of Nasa`s budget could have been better spent over the decades if the government had "Bid" out the money to the private sector, or have been awarded as grants to universities, for specific national goals. (TelCom Satellites ,Space Launch Vehicles, Pure Science and R&D)

NASA has consistantly given the tax payer "Chevy Results" for "Bugatti Sticker Shock"!

The SpaceX`s space plane,which won a 15 million dollar prize, flew a reusable vehicle to low earth orbit for the paltry sum of 70 million. Imagine what this group could have done with a tenth of NASA`s 15 billion a year budget !

Meanwhile, the "International" space station (100 billion plus boondoggle) might not even be in orbit in ten years?

IMHO , NASA`s Job 1 is how to keep their (and our Russian Comrades) pay checks in the pipeline .

Now, thats what I call innovative capitalistic vision. Where are the nutjobs who call the president 'socialist' when he is encouraging private industry to get us back up speed in space exploration. Bush just doubled down on uncontrolled NASA spending like a typical republican drunen sailor. This president has a spine and brain.

Now, thats what I call innovative capitalistic vision. Where are the nutjobs who call the president 'socialist' when he is encouraging private industry to get us back up speed in space exploration. Bush just doubled down on uncontrolled NASA spending like a typical republican drunen sailor. This president has a spine and brain.

This is good news. President Obama, the capitalist and money-saver, is showing Republicans how to be creative, money-saving, problem-solving Republicans by making use of ambitious capitalists to haul our space cargo and rocket our exploratory satellites. President Obama says we are on track for a manned mission to Mars by 2030, which is soon enough. We don't need expensive symbolism ("We're number One!") at this point in our space growth by duplicating moon landings. (Remember, if the human family is to survive, eventually we must relocate. Unfortunately, the moon or even Mars are not livable solutions. We'll need to go much, much farther from home Earth.)

Regarding Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's damning SpaceX with faint praise, in the sense that of course she wants NASA to continue having Texas as one of its chief locations, that makes sense -- but in the context of her usual support of private industry and free enterprise, her objections are somewhat surprising. After all, SpaceX has a presence in Texas already, one bound to grow if the company is successful.

As for Senator Shelby of Alabama, well, as a Native American might put it, he "speaks with a forked tongue." First to criticize the President and Congressional Democrats on "excessive" spending, when Ares-Constellation went on the chopping block, people could hear him holler and whine all over the place. And pretty much ditto the Florida Congresswoman whose district includes the Cape (but whose name escapes me at the moment).

As for my other Senator and my own Congresscritter, well, they're both staunch Republicans, and both have opposed every single Democrat initiative, giving some credence to accusations made against the Republican Party generally of having devolved into pure obstruction for its own sake. A past supporter of both, I'm re-thinking my view now, in part because of the issue of the space program. Like our Governor, they're quick to condemn and even quicker on being back in Texas to hand out the federal money they fought tooth and nail to block, trying to take credit for it, despite their vote against it.

Now, before any dyed-in-the-wool Democrat gets the wrong idea, the Dem's have a history every bit as tawdry about this stuff. For example, how much sense does it make to have Mission Control in Houston, launches from the Cape, and recovery either in the ocean, pre-shuttle, and either the Cape or Edwards during the shuttle years -- all remote from Houston. But in those days, what LBJ wanted, LBJ got.

But in the end, the slop trough has a red sideboard on one side and a blue one on the other. Plenty of room for EVERYONE to get in on The Pork of Porcine Politics and get several snoutfuls of pork stew!

Another contributor here makes the perfectly valid point that this launch was made from a taxpayer-funded facility with other costs basically covered with tax money as well.

However, in the first place, if they did so for a dime on the dollar, well, I think most of us would rather be out a dime than out ten dimes, pocketing the other nine. In the second place -- and, yes, in the longer term -- if commercial space operations progress to the point of profitibility without public funding, then only their customers will be picking up the tab, though of course if our government and/or military contract business with them, that part will continue to come from us, the taxpayers. And yes, that means part of those companies' profits will continue to come out of our pockets.

But we don't ask automakers to sell the government fleets of vehicles at cost, now, do we???